Tag: architecture

The Calgary Peace Bridge, this image was taken last winter during one of my walks to work, for a series called Morning Commute. Images were posted on my Instagram and Facebook accounts.

I have been reviewing my cache of photos, finally getting around to editing and even printing a few of them. David DuChemin, a wonderful Canadian photographer, has advocated for many years that the best way to learn and grow as a photographer is to print your work. He suggests, we “need to live with the lines and tones and moments. Feel the colours. Doing so reveals the flaws (dust spots on the sensor, anyone?), and the weaknesses.” I so often see the dust spots after the work is printed!

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The Cathedral is a magnificent building, with such a rich history, I highly recommend visiting the cathedral if you are in the city, and allow a couple of hours to listen to the audio tour and view all the details.

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I loved visiting the Alcazar, in Seville. The moorish architecture filled with lines, patterns, intricately carved stone, and lots of doorways that almost line up! So many things catch my eye and I could sit and study for hours. The gardens are wonderful to just sit and enjoy the quite. The architecture lends itself to monochrome images, removing the colour simplifies the image and amplifies the line and pattern.

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Bill and I have travelled through Leon Spain a couple of times, first as part of our walk along the Camino to Santiago de Compostella the autumn of 2013 the second visit was the summer of 2014 when we spend about three months visiting the beautiful cities of Spain.

Leon was one city we remembered fondly during the camino, during this visit we only had one day to see the city. During our visit last summer we spent a week wandering the streets, enjoying the festival and seeing the historic sites. It is often difficult when visiting a city to find an image that hasn’t been taken, I want it to have personal meaning, and contect with people. I think the statue of the pilgrim sitting resting his sore feet in Plaza de San Marcos in front of the Parador “Hostal San Marcos”

What is now The Parador had originally been built during the 16 century as the western headquarters for the military Order of Saint James. Built on the site of an old pilgrim’s hospital that had existed to house and help the pilgrims travelling to Santiago de Compostela. So the image of the pilgrim sitting resting his feet and looking at the convent, his resting place for the night reminds me of the first time we were in Leon.

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Last week I showed you the Mosque Cathedral, here is a view from the Mosque area into the Cathedral. While the Mosque is lite with small lights in the traditional candle holder hanging from the ceiling the Cathedral is lite by large windows in the dome. You can see the dramatic difference.

There is a man standing near the left side of the frame, his presence gives a sense of size. He is difficult to see with the lighting, and of course this size of image; his feet planted flatly on the ground, but his head is tilted up as he is looking towards the arches and the ceiling, trust me when I say there is a look of awe on his face. The mix of architecture, the size, the detail in the paintings and carvings, and the fact that some of this has been around for at least a 1000 years is impressive, even daunting. Impossible to show in a single image, and for me impossible to describe in a few short sentences. If you get a chance you should visit the Mosque Cathedral for yourself.

I have submitted the image for Monochrome Madness, a weekly blog post by Leanne Cole, she is up to Week 47. Forty-seven continuous weeks on monochrome images submitted by various photographers around the world. For me it keeps me thinking and processing, at least, some images in black and white. Hop on over to her blog to see more black and white images.

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We took a short train ride to Cordoba on Monday to see the Mosque Cathedral, considered to be one of the accomplished monuments of Moorish Architecture in the Western World. It began as a Visigoth Basilica in the 6th century, became an Islamic Mosque in the 7th century, and remained so until the 1236 when it was reconsecrated as a Catholic Cathedral.

During it’s history each addition and modification added to the already excisting architecture, it is amazing to see the old moorish arches mixed with the cathedral dome and vaulted ceiling, with the light of the stain glass windowns colouring the marble floor and colums. It is quite stunning and impossible to put all of that into one photo.

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so many places we have travelled to this last few month have had a wonderful combination of old and new architecture. I love to find the reflection of the old stone buildings in the windows of the new glass and steel structures that are sitting near by. I find the reflections make wonderful abstract images.

I have submitted this image to Leanne Cole’s blog, her first Monochrome Madness of 2015. Preparing a blog post each week for this forum will be one of my goals for the year. I have found that participating the the forum I have become more mindful of the images that might be better suited to monochrome processing rather than colour. I have also learned several different ways to process an image, every software that is used to process images will have at least one way to change an image from colour to black and white. It is all about experimenting with the tools you have.

For more inspirational monochrome images head on over to Leanne’s Blog if the weekly Monochrome Madness isn’t up yet it will be soon.

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If you have visited the Eiffel Tower you know that the lights on it are incandescent yellow with the occasional display of white twinkle lights that sparkle. Thousands of tourist gather around the base, and along the streets and river to watch and take photos. The Eiffel tower is iconic architecture at it’s best.

I wanted to try something a little different, and provide you with something you haven’t seen before! Using Photoshop I applied a silver-grey grunge texture, with the blend mode set to Hue and 100% opacity these beautiful blue, green, and purple spots appear over the Eiffel tower as if it has been painted.

I think we should petition the French government to have it painted in neon glow in the dark colours so it looks like this! What do you think, do you like my painted Eiffel Tower?

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While we were in Paris we visited the Centre George Pompidou,the largest museum for modern art in Europe. Aside from a very interesting works of art you can also see lovely views of Paris. While we were looking out at the city the clouds parted and lite up the Notre Dame. The Notre Dame is considered on of the greatest examples of French Gothic Architecture in Europe, and a mecca for tourist visiting Paris.

Notre Dame, French for “Our Lady of Paris” could not look more magnificent than she did that afternoon, basking in the warm afternoon sunlight.

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We haven’t been getting up for sunrise very often lately, we wanted to see Charles Bridge in the early morning before it was filled with people. Sunday and there was at least a dozen photographers with tripods, and another dozen or so people walking around with cameras at 6 am! It was cloudy so there wasn’t much of a sunrise, but it was worth getting up early because by 7 am there bridge was starting to get busy, by then we were ready for our morning coffee and croissant.